Wonder—Full Infancy: Watching them develop before your very eyes!

My goal today is to add interest to the–let’s admit it–sometimes mundane days of caring for your infant.  By helping you recognize nuances of your baby’s cognitive development– the amazing process happening right before your eyes–your brain will be stimulated too! 

Swiss Theorist Jean Piaget was one of the first to decode child behavior in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Just like Piaget, whose child development research came primarily from observing his own three children, you have a science lab in your nursery.  When you know what to look for, behaviors that seem just repetitive or well, babyish, reveal interesting movement from one phase of cognitive development to the next.

Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development. The Sensorimotor Stage encompasses ages 0-2 years in which infants learn by trial and error.  They use their eyes, ears and hands to solve problems.  The information they gain from the repeated movements eventually gets organized and coordinated.

Another way Piaget describes this learning process is disequilibrium to equilibrium.  Disequilibrium describes when a baby has not mastered a skill or encounters a new physical law such as; balls on the level roll forward and not back. Equilibrium occurs when he masters the new skill or assimilates the new information.  He gets the ball and rolls it away again. 

Because the sensorimotor stage encompasses a huge amount of development –think of the difference between an infant and a 2 year old–it is divided into six substages which we’ll explore:

Substage 1:  Birth to 1 month:  Look for reflexive schemes (capacities) such as sucking, grasping, and looking without reference to cognition.  Reflexive means that babies do these behaviors indiscriminately—without regard to their environment. For example a baby will suck on the breast or a finger or an arm, whatever comes close to his lips. He will grasp your finger involuntarily. Piaget called newborn reflexes the building blocks of sensorimotor intelligence.

Substage 2:  1-4 months:  Piaget observed that infants randomly do “primary circular reactions;” simple movements which they repeat when they like the results. (He chose the word “circular” to describe that infants act, enjoy & repeat…) For example in flailing about, they discover they can open and close their hands, which they can do and watch themselves doing.  Great fun! Sucking their fist or thumb happens randomly and then gets repeated when found to be pleasurable.  These are called primary reactions because the babies are aware primarily of themselves and their actions relate mostly to their body.

Substage 3:  4-8 months:  “Secondary circular reactions” are about making interesting sights last, Piaget said.  At this age infants are learning to sit up and interact with their environment by reaching for, grasping and manipulating objects.  Piaget labeled this “secondary” because now their attention has turned outward to their environment, not just their own bodies.  Because they are improving in their ability to control their movements they can begin to copy other’s behavior. Jessica might try to put a toy in a box or push a car like brother, all which require the ability to react to her environment.  She uses her primary skills of reaching for and grasping a toy along with her secondary skills of putting the toy in an interesting place in her world.
 
Stage 4:  8-12 months: The infant is now coordinating earlier reactions intentionally which Piaget called “Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions.” The infant can arrive at more complex “action sequences” such as pushing aside an obstacle to find and grasp a hidden toy. The baby can now hold mental image of a toy and look for it somewhere else. This is called Object Permanence, which you can read more about in a previous blog.

In order to enjoy pretending to eat a bowl of cereal like big brother, the baby has to organize grasping a spoon, making a scooping action, lifting it while opening his mouth to put the spoon in—well, almost in.  He usually bangs it into his cheek because that’s a lot of skill coordination to manage. He also has to have observed this behavior happening around him and find it desirable to repeat. And he will practice it over and over which is why it’s called “circular.”

-posted by Donna Mershon Detweiler, who is going to write all about about toddler’s sensorimotor development tomorrow.